Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

The setting of the movie is in a small secluded town, with forest and woods nearby. It is shabby and dark, solemn and reeks of despair, much like most Tim Burton movies. The characters are Victor Van Dort, Corpse Bride, Victoria and Barkis Bittern as the main characters. Their makeup is tired looking, with purple shadows under their eyes, with Victorian-era fashion.

The movie is a stop-motion animation, and most of the scenes are at night, and very dark colours are used in this movie. Tim Burton has used many varieties of shots, and because of the small characters like the worm and the spider, there were a lot of big close-ups. There weren’t many shots imitating dollying up or real camera shot techniques as well. However, they were a lot of zoom ins to signify the shocking factor, like when Barkis Bittern swallowed the laced drink and was dead.

They were mostly shot to shot, straight cuts. There was a lot of backlighting involved as well. The black and white contrast is very high, and ala Tim Burton he used many stripes on his character’s costumes. The camera angles that were mostly used in this movie was also from low angle. The transitions are commonly the continuity shots. This movie is also a sort of musical, because there were several songs played, and the songs composed were very much fitting, as it was haunting, while some are a bit cheeky and contain some dark humour. As usual, his main voice actors are Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

There is also montage shots to signify that the character is very laden down with the stress from his parents and his peers. As the scenes are beautiful, there were a lot of establishing shots or long shots that show the character and its surroundings.

Overall, the movie gives a very gothic feel, the stop-motion was flawless, the colour schemes albeit dark goes very well with each other, and paired with the music altogether forms a perfect jigsaw piece of a great movie.

The storyline is where Victor has to be wed with Victoria, who is the only daughter of Lord and Lady Everglot, who decides to marry beneath their status because they are close to being in poverty. Overall the plot is going around one of the seven sins: Greed. Victor, who was nervous about his vows one day before his marriage, practiced on what he thought was a branch, but ended up being the bony finger of a corpse, whom then takes him underground. The corpse bride, Emily was killed before uniting with her lover, who turned out to be Lord Barkiss, who was a greedy and cold man. He stepped in before Victor could take Victoria’s hand in marriage just because he assumed that the Everglotts, being Lords are rich and powerful, but that was not the case.

After marriage, when Lord Barkiss found out that Victoria was not filthy rich, he threw a big tantrum and swore to get something out of the marriage, but then was interrupted by the underground residents, who came up to celebrate the wedding of Victor and Emily, whom Victor has decided to marry because Victoria was already married to Lord Barkiss.

From there we can deduce that Victor has given up hope that he would find anyone like Victoria, and would rather live without his life, and at least make someone happy rather than no one.

In the scene where the underground residents came above the ground, when they approached the people, at first the people were scared. However, it showed a boy, who due to his innocence, can ignore other elements and recognize his grandfather despite the bones and haggardness, and it is thanks to this this boy that the others began to look at the underground residents properly and recognize their loved ones, re-united once again.

This movie symbolizes that love can go beyond the grave, and that karma will come to those who deserves it. It also shows that love is not about status and money, and that true love will find its own way to shine. Although it is quite the typical love concept, Tim Burton put the element of dark fantasy in it that we are blinded to the fact that it is yet another love story.

The clay-like stop animation is very smooth and very symmetrical. The lightings are very “concert”-like, as it shows spot lights of various colours come from all directions; top, bottom left and right, which can be clearly seen in the scene where the bartenders are explaining about Emily’s death to Victor when he was just brought down to the underground. However, this kind of lighting can be seen in various parts of the movie, and it actually used quite often.